Strategy to migrate huge site from GA to matomo

General questions
1

Hi everybody,

we are currently trying to migrate from GA to matomo. We have one site with a lot of GA data, which therefore takes a loooooong time to import. We certainly don’t want to wait for the whole import to finish before making the switch.

What would be the best strategy to switch to matomo while integrating the old data?

My plan was/is:

  1. First do a quick import from current (FIXED) date back to (idk) a year maybe to get the matomo site initialized (unfortunately it seems GA import always creates a new site)

  2. Switch tracking to matomo once the import has settled, using the same site

  3. Reimport the remaining historical data range from GA. Or should I change the import end date? Or both?

Would this work at all? Or is there a better strategy (e.g. can I merge data from two sites maybe?)

Best regards
JM

2

I don’t know GA import well…
I know that if you create a GA import, it will then create a new site…

In my opinion, you’ll get, at the end, some differences between GA data and Maotmo data (because of the changes of consent management, bus also because Firefox will probably prevent more trackings on G than on Matomo, etc. Then they will probably not be really comparable…
So do you really need the whole data history in Matomo? After migration, you may keep GA data during 1 year, then, your Matomo data will be sufficient to have good insights and be able to forget old GA data…